Forge Build: No Welding Required

so I've seen a lot of forges and I've built a few I don't know not a whole bunch but some but I decided that we needed to come up with a design for a simple propane Forge that you could build with almost no tools that if you could cut some angle iron and if you could drill some holes through some thin stock you could build a Ford you wouldn't have to be able to weld you wouldn't have to be able to do any machine work just just cut and drill and bolt a forge together I've come up with something that I think it's a good solution I think it's as good a forge as you can put together for the money and you can do it in your shop with no trouble the first thing you've got to have is so about eight feet of two by two by eighth inch wall angle iron you got to have a couple feet of inch and a quarter by 3/16 or anywhere there abouts the size on this bar stock is not critical this is just what I have in the shop all of the instructions all the details all the cut list and the distances and the spacings will be in the notes to this video you can check it out I don't know if there's a way to print that or not but at least you can go there and look at it and jot it down and have it with you when you start so right now I'm just gonna lay this steel out mark it we'll get it cut to length and then we'll worry about drilling so I think one of the real benefits to this Forge is that it's little it's essentially a net zero space burner because it is actually a work table or at least a tool storage table and a forge and it it will disassemble you'll be able to take this thing apart and store it in a box you know in just a small amount of space you'll be able to store these components if you're not going to be smithing for a while it just uses lightweight firebrick angle iron little bar stock you got to have some all-thread did I mention that 7/16 install thread you gotta have four twelve inch pieces of that so anyway the cut list will be in the description the sequence you can pick up by watching this thing go together let's lay out the steel cutter to length [Music] we're gonna drill these holes in a right-left fashion that is one of these will be a right piece one of them will be a left piece we're gonna come in from the end one inch and then thirteen inches and then 23 inches and in order to make it right left we come over the top for one inch 1323 so here's what that does that's put 10 inches from here to here and 12 inches from here to there and we center punch and this does not have to be precise so I just scribe eyeballed inch with Center marks on there we're gonna make it easy for our drill press you're gonna drill one of these an inch from the end 9 inches long so you come in to one and eight these last holes are drilled 10 and 1/8 center-to-center it doesn't really matter how far back they are from the end of the bar but 10 and 1/8 the center to Center is important the center there we go and a little too far apart is way better than too close together I'm gonna drill this on my drill press I'm spoiled but there's not a lot of holes I've got 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 10 12 12 holes through eighth inch and 3/16 inch material you can do that with a cordless drill you can do that with a corded drill you can do that with whatever you've got that'll drill a hole we're drilling them half an inch in diameter there's gonna be lots of room for adjustment and wiggling things around which is fine once those holder holes are drilled it's gonna be time to put this Forge together so if you've not drilled steel before you don't want that bit to be spinning fast you hold the RPMs down as best you can you keep the pressure steady and the reason for that is you don't want the bit to accumulate heat so you can lubricate the bit water or oil oil is best but if your bid is really sharp and if you've got good pressure on there so that it's cutting a nice shaving lubrication is almost optional but most bits aren't sharp and so if it's good to be rubbing at all and the friction grows you've got to keep some sort of lubrication on there get some sort of a light oil you know gun oil or sewing machine oil or 20 weight or salad oil really anything you've got that'll lubricate that bit in the steel and then just hold the RPMs down a little bit you'll do yourself a favor so it is some fairly important I think with the spacing on these holes that these nuts come to rest with the flat side of the hex against the angle that the spacing is such that the angle holds the nuts from backing off and the nuts hold the angles up tight against the bricks you know I chickened out I told you I drilled all the holes half-inch but I drilled these a little smaller and I should have drilled them half inch so drill your holes half-inch you won't regret it so now you just square everything up everything supported and we'll just tighten these down compress these bricks not super tight but nice and snug and there's the body of your forge pretty tough pretty serviceable so now we're going to drill the hole for the burner this brick kind of slid out a little bit do that I don't like that there's your Forge so it's easy to move around it's not very heavy it's pretty serviceable and it gets hot now we're gonna drill the hole for the burner to sit in this is a burner that I took out of a different Forge I bought it online on eBay there's a lot of them out there you can buy them I think I paid 70 bucks for this very simple 3/4 inch pipe Atty inject the fuel 9 inch nipple 3 quarter 2 inch and a quarter bail reducer drilled in through the side but you drill whatever size hole your burner is right through this fire brick this soft fire brick is highly insulating it's weak and you can drill it you can cut it with a cheese knife for crying out loud so what I do is I set this in here visualize where everything's going to kind of come to rest I want this coming in kind of in the bottom third of the forge space so we bottomed out right there but this stuff was weak enough that I think I can just yeah pull that out so that's the shape of the cylinder that I took out of the inside coming up at an angle and then this bad boy will just slip in there little ways like that let the valve project out over the edge so now you just gotta fasten this burner to the frame really really reliably because you don't want this thing falling off and dropping onto the floor of your shop that would be a wreck this Forge now is ready to go you just throw a couple bricks on each side for a doorway more bricks if you want for a little hearth if you had enough you could stack up a hearth and then put a brick on there for a door doesn't really matter because that Forge cork up the sides enough that you still have airflow is ready to rock there's a really slick little improvement you can do to this if you've got a piece of plate steel maybe a piece of expanded metal you know shaker screen anything that's not flammable you don't want to try to put a wooden tray up here but you can actually put a little table over the top of this which makes your loss of bench space for your Forge go away because now you can put punches and chisels and tongs and stuff right here on top watch this I had a piece of diamond plate we're gonna set it on here like this but I need to extend these legs so it's held up all the way out I'm glad I drilled these holes bigger tighten these down pretty good like as hard as you want really good enough you could use three-eighths all thread here you could use half I just like the proportion of this 7/16 so now here's the drill six more holes so I think for a little bitty Forge easy to get into satisfaction of building it yourself I think this is hard to beat the bricks will deteriorate they always crack in the middle but they're captured so tightly that the cracked bricks can't fall out when the time comes that the floor is degraded because you've been you know doing Damascus or just scraping in and out you can take this thing apart put in a new set of bricks put it back together you can put any naturally aspirated propane burner in here you can make one you can buy one you can modify this easily and then just get a hole saw that whatever to match the outside diameter of the burner that you're running through the wall and just drill the hole it drills just easy as you saw there are just a whole bunch of reasons that this is a good way to go when if you tire of the craft or you decided to put the hobby away or you move it will break down obviously into a very small package easily packed easily stored easily set back up if you're thinking of getting into blacksmithing and you put together a forge like this and you have a propane tank really all you have to do is come up with something that will serve as an anvil a couple of hammers a set of tongs though those can be made and you are you're becoming a blacksmith so as it turns out in order to build a forge you don't need anything except a hacksaw some way to cut light steel and a drill some way to drill light steel and drill through fire brick so that is one big obstacle down an anvil that will present itself or you can make something or you can buy something new hammers are everywhere tongs or pliers can be used until you can make your own tongs so most durable least expensive most serviceable Forge that I've ever seen and I think you ought to go ahead and build one if you're considering building a forge I've got to assume you're thinking about getting into blacksmithing if that's the case way to go man you will never be sorry that you learned the craft and something that you may be not aware of is that it just doesn't take that many tools a pretty small set of tools will get you going you know the Forge a simple Forge a basic small Forge is plenty you need some kind of an anvil if you can't find a little antique anvil like that like this that's all right there are new new modern alternatives and in fact I've put together a tool list you can go to start blacksmithing calm you can click the link in the notes of this video and it'll take you to a list that I've prepared that are just a very complete setup for a beginning blacksmith not only is it a complete setup for a beginning blacksmith but there are tools in there that you ought to have if you're a blacksmith or not there are tools in there that are just part of any basic toolkit that somebody ought to have in their garage that no matter where you go and no matter what you do you'll be able to take with you and use when you need to accomplish a particular job so we've checked these tools out the prices are good they're available they're useful and you go check it out to see if there is a set of tools here that you could use to actually become a blacksmith instead of just watching videos about how you might become a blacksmith

Channel: Essential Craftsman

Views: 667,540

Rating: 4.9626055 out of 5

Keywords: forge, burner, diy, blacksmith, create, build, weld, iron, steel, metalwork, foundry, propane, gas, budget

Id: TS7wumQt0s8

Length: 16min 1sec (961 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 07 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/greybye]

Meh. Note at the end of the video the bricks are already breaking up and the forge has been lined with refractory. Not the best build.